magic quadrant for data integration...
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3/23/13 Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools
www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1CYG9N1&ct=121127&st=sb 1/19
Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools
18 October 2012 ID:G00233285
Analyst(s): Eric Thoo, Ted Friedman, Mark A. Beyer
VIEW SUMMARY
The data integration tool market continues to fulfill enterprise-scale requirements, while project-
oriented, rapid deployments have increased. Demands emphasize comprehensive data delivery,
support of emergent analytics and big data, synergy across data management, and quality
customer experience.
Market Definition/Description
The data integration tool market comprises vendors that offer software products to enable the
construction and implementation of data access and data delivery infrastructure for a variety of
data integration scenarios, including:
Data acquisition for business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing: Extracting data
from operational systems, transforming and merging that data, and delivering it to
integrated data structures for analytics purposes. BI and data warehousing remain
mainstays of the demand for data integration tools.
Consolidation and delivery of master data in support of master data management
(MDM): Enabling the consolidation and rationalization of the data representing critical
business entities, such as customers, products and employees. MDM may or may not be
subject-based, and data integration tools can be used to build the data consolidation and
synchronization processes that are key to success.
Data migrations/conversions: Although traditionally addressed most often via the custom
coding of conversion programs, data integration tools are increasingly addressing the data
movement and transformation challenges inherent in the replacement of legacy applications
and consolidation efforts during mergers and acquisitions.
Synchronization of data between operational applications: In a similar concept to each of
the previous scenarios, data integration tools provide the ability to ensure database-level
consistency across applications, both on an internal and an interenterprise basis (for
example, involving data structures for software-as-a-service [SaaS] applications or cloud-
resident data sources), and in a bidirectional or unidirectional manner.
Interenterprise data sharing: Organizations are increasingly required to provide data to,
and receive data from, external trading partners (customers, suppliers, business partners
and others). Data integration tools are relevant in addressing these challenges, which often
consist of the same types of data access, transformation and movement components found
in other common use cases.
Delivery of data services in an SOA context: An architectural technique, rather than a use
of data integration itself, data services represent an emerging trend for the role and
implementation of data integration capabilities within service-oriented architectures (SOAs).
Data integration tools will increasingly enable the delivery of many types of data services.
Gartner has defined multiple classes of functional capability that vendors of data integration tools
must possess to deliver optimal value to organizations in support of a full range of data
integration scenarios:
Connectivity/adapter capabilities (data source and target support): The ability to interact
with a range of different types of data structure, including:
Relational databases
Legacy and nonrelational databases
Various file formats
XML
Packaged applications, such as CRM and supply chain management
SaaS and cloud-based applications and sources
Industry-standard message formats such as electronic data interchange (EDI), Swift
and Health Level Seven International (HL7)
Externalized parallel distributed processing (such as Hadoop Distributed File System
[HDFS] and other noSQL-type repositories)
Message queues, including those provided by application integration middleware
products and standards-based products (such as Java Message Service [JMS])
EVIDENCE
The analysis in this research is based on
information from a number of sources, including,
but not limited to:
Extensive data on functional capabilities,
customer base demographics, financial status,
pricing and other quantitative attributes
gained via an RFI process engaging vendors
in this market.
Interactive briefings in which the vendors
provided Gartner with updates on their
strategy, market positioning, recent key
developments and product road map.
A Web-based survey of reference customers
provided by each vendor, which captured data
on usage patterns, levels of satisfaction with
major product functionality categories, various
nontechnology vendor attributes (such as
pricing, product support and overall service
delivery) and more. In total, 392
organizations across all major world regions
provided input on their experiences with
vendors and tools in this manner.
Feedback about tools and vendors captured
during conversations with users of Gartner's
client inquiry service.
Market share estimates developed by
Gartner's Technology and Service Provider
research unit.
EVALUATION CRITERIA DEFINITIONS
Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services
offered by the vendor that compete in/serve the
defined market. This includes current
product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets,
skills, etc., whether offered natively or through
OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the
market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial,
Strategy, Organization): Viability includes an
assessment of the overall organization's financial
health, the financial and practical success of the
business unit, and the likelihood of the individual
business unit to continue investing in the product,
to continue offering the product and to advance
the state of the art within the organization's
portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities
in all pre-sales activities and the structure that
supports them. This includes deal management,
pricing and negotiation, pre-sales support and
the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Ability
to respond, change direction, be flexible and
achieve competitive success as opportunities
develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve
and market dynamics change. This criterion also
considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality,
creativity and efficacy of programs designed to
deliver the organization's message in order to
influence the market, promote the brand and
business, increase awareness of the products,
and establish a positive identification with the
product/brand and organization in the minds of
buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a
combination of publicity, promotional, thought
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Emergent data types of a less structured nature, such as email, websites, office
productivity tools and content repositories
In addition, data integration tools must support different modes of interaction with this
range of data structure types, including:
Bulk acquisition and delivery
Granular trickle-feed acquisition and delivery
Changed data capture (CDC) — the ability to identify and extract modified data
Event-based acquisition (time-based or data-value-based)
Data delivery capabilities: The ability to provide data to consuming applications, processes
and databases in a variety of modes, including:
Physical bulk data movement between data repositories
Federated views formulated in memory
Message-oriented movement via encapsulation
Replication of data between homogeneous or heterogeneous database management
systems (DBMSs) and schemas
In addition, support for the delivery of data across the range of latency requirements is
important, including:
Scheduled batch delivery
Streaming/near-real-time delivery
Event-driven delivery of data based on identification of a relevant event
Data transformation capabilities: Built-in capabilities for achieving data transformation
operations of varying complexity, including:
Basic transformations, such as data type conversions, string manipulations and simple
calculations
Intermediate-complexity transformations, such as lookup and replace operations,
aggregations, summarizations, deterministic matching, and the management of slowly
changing dimensions
Complex transformations, such as sophisticated parsing operations on free-form text
and rich media
In addition, the tools must provide facilities for developing custom transformations and
extending packaged transformations.
Metadata and data modeling capabilities: As the increasingly important heart of data
integration capabilities, metadata management and data modeling requirements include:
Automated discovery and acquisition of metadata from data sources, applications and
other tools
Data model creation and maintenance
Physical to logical model mapping and rationalization
Defining model-to-model relationships via graphical attribute-level mapping
Lineage and impact analysis reporting, via graphical and tabular format
An open metadata repository, with the ability to share metadata bidirectionally with
other tools
Automated synchronization of metadata across multiple instances of the tools
Ability to extend the metadata repository with customer-defined metadata attributes
and relationships
Documentation of project/program delivery definitions and design principles in support
of requirements definition activities
Business analyst/end-user interface to view and work with metadata
Design and development environment capabilities: Facilities for enabling the specification
and construction of data integration processes, including:
Graphical representation of repository objects, data models and data flows
Workflow management for the development process, addressing requirements such as
approvals and promotions
Granular, role-based and developer-based security
Team-based development capabilities, such as version control and collaboration
Functionality to support reuse across developers and projects, and to facilitate the
identification of redundancies
Support for testing and debugging
Data governance support capabilities (via interoperation with data quality, profiling and
mining capabilities): Mechanisms to work with related capabilities to help the
understanding and assurance of data quality over time, including interoperability with:
Data profiling tools
Data mining tools
Data quality tools
Deployment options and runtime platform capabilities: Breadth of support for the
hardware and operating systems on which data integration processes may be deployed, and
the choices of delivery model; specifically:
Mainframe environments, such as IBM z/OS and z/Linux
Midrange environments, such as IBM System i (formerly AS/400) or HP Tandem
leadership, word-of-mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products
and services/programs that enable clients to be
successful with the products evaluated.
Specifically, this includes the ways customers
receive technical support or account support. This
can also include ancillary tools, customer support
programs (and the quality thereof), availability of
user groups, service-level agreements, etc.
Operations: The ability of the organization to
meet its goals and commitments. Factors include
the quality of the organizational structure
including skills, experiences, programs, systems
and other vehicles that enable the organization to
operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing
basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to
understand buyers' wants and needs and to
translate those into products and services.
Vendors that show the highest degree of vision
listen and understand buyers' wants and needs,
and can shape or enhance those with their added
vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of
messages consistently communicated throughout
the organization and externalized through the
website, advertising, customer programs and
positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling product
that uses the appropriate network of direct and
indirect sales, marketing, service and
communication affiliates that extend the scope
and depth of market reach, skills, expertise,
technologies, services and the customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's
approach to product development and delivery
that emphasizes differentiation, functionality,
methodology and feature set as they map to
current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the
vendor's underlying business proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's
strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to
meet the specific needs of individual market
segments, including verticals.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and
synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or
capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or
pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to
direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the
specific needs of geographies outside the "home"
or native geography, either directly or through
partners, channels and subsidiaries as
appropriate for that geography and market.
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Unix-based environments
Windows environments
Linux environments
Traditional on-premises (at the customer site) installation and deployment of software
Hosted off-premises software deployment (SaaS model)
Server virtualization (support for shared, virtualized implementations)
Parallel distributed processing (such as Hadoop, MapReduce)
Operations and administration capabilities: Facilities for enabling adequate ongoing
support, management, monitoring and control of the data integration processes
implemented via the tools, such as:
Error-handling functionality, both predefined and customizable
The monitoring and control of runtime processes, both via functionality in the tools and
interoperability with other IT operations technologies
The collection of runtime statistics to determine use and efficiency, as well as an
application-style interface for visualization and evaluation
Security controls, for both data "in flight" and administrator processes
A runtime architecture that ensures performance and scalability
Architecture and integration capabilities: The degree of commonality, consistency and
interoperability between the various components of the data integration toolset, including:
A minimal number of products (ideally one) supporting all data delivery modes
Common metadata (a single repository) and/or the ability to share metadata across all
components and data delivery modes
A common design environment to support all data delivery modes
The ability to switch seamlessly and transparently between delivery modes (bulk/batch
vs. granular real-time vs. federation) with minimal rework
Interoperability with other integration tools and applications, via certified interfaces and
robust APIs
Efficient support for all data delivery modes, regardless of runtime architecture type
(centralized server engine versus distributed runtime)
Service enablement capabilities: As acceptance of data service concepts continues to grow,
data integration tools must exhibit service-oriented characteristics and provide support for
SOA deployments, such as:
The ability to deploy all aspects of runtime functionality as data services
Management of publication and testing of data services
Interaction with service repositories and registries
Service enablement of development and administration environments, so that external
tools and applications can dynamically modify and control the runtime behavior of the
tools
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Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools
Source: Gartner (October 2012)
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Vendor Strengths and Cautions
IBM
Located in Armonk, New York, IBM (www.ibm.com) offers the following products: IBM InfoSphere
Information Server Enterprise Edition (including these components: InfoSphere DataStage,
InfoSphere QualityStage and InfoSphere Business Information Exchange), InfoSphere Federation
Server, InfoSphere Replication Server and InfoSphere Data Event Publisher. The vendor's
customer base is estimated at approximately 9,400.
Strengths
Breadth of functionality: IBM provides an extensive range of data integration functions,
including bulk-batch extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), CDC and propagation, data
replication, and data federation. IBM continues to demonstrate strong vision in the market
for extensive data integration capabilities comprising products sold both independently and
in InfoSphere Information Server Packages. Reference customers cited the broad portfolio of
capabilities and the alignment with demand trends to support comprehensive data
management challenges as significant factors for choosing IBM's data integration offerings.
Installed base and diversity of usage: IBM's tools continue to be adopted as
enterprisewide data integration technology standards, and many IBM customers are
applying the tools to multiple and diverse project types. IBM's customers often address data
integration projects of greater scale and complexity than are attempted with many of its
competitors' products. The tool deployments reflect a range of deployment use cases,
including BI and data warehousing, MDM, data migration, and operational integration
scenarios, and by multiple projects involving teams of varying sizes.
Synergy with related InfoSphere products: IBM positions its data integration capabilities
for stand-alone deployment, as well as in support of and in a synergistic relationship with
other InfoSphere capabilities, such as its data quality tooling and MDM offerings. The
combination of data integration capabilities to support broad data management functionality
and other components of the portfolio, achieved via common and shared metadata, is often
cited by reference customers as a strength. The release of version 8.7 in November 2011
offered enhanced manageability with the introduction of expanded real-time-operations
console functionality and enhanced support for big data.
Cautions
Degree of integration within product portfolio: Reference customers cited challenges with
overall complexity of the product set, especially when multiple products are used in an
integrated fashion. Some reference customers indicated that the actual level of product
integration was less than expected. IBM is addressing these issues by delivering features
that improve ease of integration across products as well as by offering its Concierge
Program to provide expertise and guidance for product upgrade assistance.
General usability challenges: IBM's data integration tool customers continue to identify
longer learning curves, greater complexity and longer time to value as challenges. Although
this is likely to be partly due to the more complex problems addressed by some of these
implementations, IBM's customers commonly express a desire for improved usability. Greater
clarity for error warnings was cited as necessary when interpreting runtime error or warning
messages to determine causes and resolutions. IBM's product road map and the next
significant release of version 9.1, expected in 4Q12, include enhancing user experience with
improvements for guiding troubleshooting, easing developers' efforts and supporting self-
service.
Cost model: While customers recognize a reasonable connection of IBM's data integration
tool pricing to anticipated value, reference customers and many prospective customers
indicate that prices can be prohibitive and their perception is of a high total cost of
ownership (TCO). IBM's new packaging options, including Enterprise and Workgroup editions
and data warehousing offerings, are aimed at mitigating these concerns by providing
commonly used bundles of components for functionality required in a specific use case, and
entry-level prices suitable for smaller customers and implementations.
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Informatica
Located in Redwood City, California, Informatica (www.informatica.com) offers the following
products: Informatica Platform (including these components: PowerCenter, PowerExchange, Data
Services, Data Replication, Ultra Messaging and Cloud Data Integration). The vendor's customer
base is estimated at approximately 5,000.
Strengths
Range of functionality across data integration styles: Informatica provides support for all
key data integration styles, including bulk-batch ETL, real-time and granular data flow via
CDC/propagation and replication, data federation, and messaging. This range of functionality
aligns well with evolving demands in the data integration tool market. Informatica continues
to develop points of linkage and integration between and across these data integration
styles, enabling customers to leverage them in a synergistic manner.
Proven capabilities for a wide range of use cases: The Informatica customer base reflects
a diverse set of use cases and a good number of large deployments in which Informatica is
the enterprisewide standard for data integration tooling. Reference customers cite the core
functionality of the platform (primarily the range of connectivity, transformation capabilities,
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scalability and developer productivity), as well as the general level of service and support
provided by the vendor, as key strengths and reasons for their ongoing use of the
technology.
Product delivery aligned to demand trends: Informatica's product strategy and road map
align well with demand trends, including a current focus on big data. Version 9.5 adds
increased support for Hadoop and popular analytics database applications (such as Oracle
Exadata and EMC Greenplum) and connectivity and natural language processing for social
media, among other new features. While many competitors have added capabilities to
deliver data to Hadoop and other big data environments, Informatica differentiates by
enabling this across a range of latencies and granularities — customers can deliver data to
these environments in bulk/batch mode, via replication or via messaging architectures. In
addition, the vendor supports the ability for Hadoop-based data to participate in federated
views, as well as the ability to run some data transformation tasks directly on Hadoop.
Cautions
Degree of marketing focus on traditional use cases: While its product road map is aligned
with future demand trends, Informatica needs to be careful of developing and marketing too
far ahead of mainstream market demand. The vast majority of customers and prospects,
while interested in future opportunities with cloud computing and big data, remain focused
on more mature use cases and deployment models. While product development activities are
addressing both traditional and visionary use cases, Informatica needs to balance its
messaging around expansion into new areas, with a focus on the interests of more-
conservative customers and those interested in traditional use cases.
Ongoing product integration requirements: While the overall range of functionality provided
by Informatica is significant and customers find the core capabilities to be strong, they also
desire greater integration among the products. Informatica must continue to progress
toward rationalized design environments and metadata across the full range of integration
styles, as well as across related product lines.
Pricing and perceptions of TCO: Informatica's price points and pricing model remain a
challenge, with nearly 50% of reference customers in a recent sample noting this as one of
the most significant issues they find in working with the vendor. This includes both the initial
cost of purchasing Informatica's products, as well as the perceived high cost of add-on
options, which some customers cite as an inhibitor for them in adding further functionality.
With growing competition from vendors with pricing models that afford customers a more
consumable entry point into the technology, Informatica will be increasingly pressured to
evolve its pricing approach. The recent release of various solution-oriented bundles of
Informatica products is an example of how the vendor is attempting to address these
challenges.
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Information Builders-iWay Software
Located in New York, New York, Information Builders-iWay Software
(www.informationbuilders.com) offers the following products: Data Integration Solutions (iWay
Service Manager, iWay DataMigrator, iWay DataMigrator CDC and iWay Universal Adapter Suite)
and Integrity Solutions (data quality and data governance). The vendor's customer base is
estimated at more than 425.
Strengths
Product depth and perceived value: Through iWay products, Information Builders offers
capabilities for physical data movement and delivery (via its DataMigrator ETL tool), real-time
message-oriented integration (supported by the Service Manager product) and data
federation (via the iWay Data Hub product). iWay has always been known for its adapters
and connectivity; however, in 2011, customers also began to report ease of use and
interoperability with its data quality tools. Customers indicate that the tools perform as
advertised.
Cloud and big data: iWay Service Manager has supported MapReduce functionality for use
on both structured information and content since March 2011. The tool supports complex
event process models (since July 2011) — good models for supporting cloud and big data in
combination, and specifically targeted for social media analytics.
Capturing governance and data management trends: Information Builders' solution
strategy combines data integration with data management and governance through
interoperability with its MDM products, data quality and data-profiling capabilities. With a
wide array of bidirectional connectivity adapters, the tools can capture data from sources,
analyze the data for governance rules and then deliver data to targets. This allows for the
incremental expansion of its product footprint beyond data integration.
Leveraging presence in BI platform market and customer experience: With a solid partner
program, iWay offerings include software and hardware partners as well as implementation
solution providers. In 2012, Information Builders has begun to see benefits from its 2010
expansion in sales force expansion, presence in Europe and competitive positioning in
leveraging the large WebFOCUS customer base. "Adaptable" and "support" are two words
repeated every year and in Gartner's surveys and client inquiries since October 2011.
Customers indicate that the vendor offers a framework that supports existing architectures
and extends them. The adapters and connectors are reported as almost peerless. Support is
equally touted by value-added resellers, OEM partners and end users. Ease of use is a very
close third-most-frequent comment.
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Cautions
Mind share in the market: Information Builders is not considered in bids for data integration
tools as frequently as its market-leading competitors. Customers report that they often do
not compare the vendor's data integration solutions against major competitors such as
Informatica, although, relatively, Information Builders has more participation in competitive
bids involving IBM and SAP. iWay offerings work with a lack of relative mainstream
recognition for its data integration solutions, often at departmental-level implementations for
limited projects, with few users working with the tools.
Positioning and relevance in bid process: Almost all of our respondents indicated that
understanding business processes and technical standards was important. But, in iWay's
case, the normalized responses indicate that these factors were considered only moderately
important (5 out of 7) more often than their competitors. This implies iWay customers
tolerate variance from their standards when beginning with iWay products, and are more
forgiving of the absence of industry vertical and business process experience. At the same
time, customers reported that they expected more thorough and complete responses from
iWay during the acquisition process, including a good understanding of iWay's recommended
implementation methodology and solid references. New iWay customers want a solid
methodology and customer reference validation when adding iWay and Information Builders
products to their environment, and their confidence grows through experience with this
vendor.
Customer experience: Almost every weakness cited by references of iWay products is
related to the availability of skilled users and/or training resources for the tools. Some
organizations established in-house training and built up their expertise in response.
Duration of iWay projects from point of purchase of the vendor's data integration tools to
reaching production deployment reflects somewhat longer time to deliver than projects
implemented with competitors' tools. The skills gap is a significant driver that slowed
deployment. Some customers reported licensing costs, with specific complaints that the
development and test environments' pricing was too high.
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Microsoft
Located in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) offers the following products:
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and BizTalk Server. The vendor's customer base is
estimated at more than 12,000.
Strengths
Solid coverage of core capabilities: Microsoft's main offering in the data integration tool
market is SSIS, which is largely focused on bulk/batch-oriented data delivery. SSIS is in
broad deployment within the SQL Server customer base, addressing the range of core data
integration functions most relevant to predominant market demand among the established
installed base. Reference customers cite SSIS's low TCO, speed of implementation, ease of
use and tight integration with other capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server as main value points.
With the addition of Data Quality Services (DQS) in SQL Server 2012 (where DQS can be
deployed independently of SSIS), Microsoft now offers customers the ability to embed data
quality operations in SSIS-driven data integration processes.
Track record and implementation scale: Reference customers continue to recognize SSIS
as a stable and maturing data integration tool capable of supporting enterprise-scale
implementations in Microsoft-centric environments. Deployment scenarios are expanding
beyond BI and data warehousing to broadening uses in support of data consistency
between operational applications and data migrations. Wide use of SSIS by SQL Server
customers has resulted in widely available community support, training and third-party
documentation on implementation practices and approaches to problem resolution.
Brand awareness and market presence: Microsoft's size and global presence provide a
huge customer base and a distribution model that supports both direct and channel partner
sales. Customer references generally report a very positive support and service experience,
including product documentation and online support mechanisms.
Cautions
Breadth of functionality: Although Microsoft's emphasis addresses core data integration
requirements, its present product capability does not articulate a comprehensive data
integration vision in the market. Implementations for supporting diverse data integration
styles, such as data federation, replication-style data delivery and CDC, remain relatively
limited. These functions are achievable via SQL Server functionality for SQL Server-oriented
datasets, and use of functionality via technology partners for CDC and heterogeneous data
replication. The product road map for Microsoft's data integration capabilities promises to
address frequently cited weaknesses for impact and lineage metadata management
capabilities, to address current limitations in metadata discovery, lineage and dependency
reporting.
Broad platform support: The inability to deploy data integration workloads on non-Windows
environments is a limitation for customers wishing to leverage the processing power of
diverse hardware and operating system platforms.
Synergy across product portfolio: Microsoft offers additional functionality in the related
market of application integration, support for MDM solutions and, more recently, data quality
offerings. However, implementations increasingly require reduced development efforts for
data integration involving a broad product set, such as flexibly operating across multiple
data delivery styles, and between SSIS and multiple products.
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Oracle
Located in Redwood Shores, California, Oracle (www.oracle.com) offers the following products:
Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle Data Service Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Warehouse
Builder. The vendor's customer base is estimated at more than 3,500.
Strengths
Breadth of functionality: The efforts during the past two years of Oracle's unified product
development approach for data integration offerings have delivered breadth and depth of
functionality and experience. Oracle's data integration capabilities center on Oracle Data
Integrator for bulk-batch data movement and Oracle GoldenGate for CDC and real-time data
delivery. Oracle Data Service Integrator provides data federation capabilities. Oracle
Warehouse Builder also supports bulk-batch data movement and is bundled with the Oracle
DBMS. These primary data integration products, along with the message-oriented
functionality of Oracle WebLogic, enable the vendor to support each of the major data
delivery styles in this market.
Usability of core functionality across use cases: References using Oracle Data Integrator
like its ease of use, and these customers also exhibit a mix of use cases and project types.
While the vast majority use the tools in support of BI, increasing activities are represented in
enabling data consistency between operational applications and data migrations. Ongoing
embedding of the Oracle Data Integrator technology across Oracle's portfolio, along with
extended knowledge modules, have enhanced data connectivity and transformation to
support big data. Adoption of both Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate continues
to grow within the Oracle DBMS and application customer base.
Addressing data challenges across a range of application- and data-oriented customer
bases: As main reasons for selecting Oracle's tools in this market, reference customers
perceived Oracle as a comprehensive provider for their potential data integration and other
data management functionality requirements, such as data quality tools and MDM solutions.
Oracle has a great deal of potential to grow its presence, revenue and share in the data
integration tool market by cross-selling to its very large application, BI/analytics, DBMS and
database appliance customer bases.
Cautions
Enabling product migration: The increasing adoption of Oracle Data Integrator as a
replacement for Oracle Warehouse Builder is raising demand in enterprises for an easier
migration path. Oracle is addressing this need through plans to make available a migration
wizard tool during the next year for supporting such migration efforts.
Complexity of integrated deployment across products: Customers report that it is
necessary to acquire multiple products to achieve a range of data integration functionality,
and cited desires for simpler ways to achieve integrated deployment across Oracle's product
set. While the development effort for deepening the integration of Oracle's data integration
products continues, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle Data Service Integrator and Oracle
GoldenGate adoptions reflect predominantly stand-alone deployments. Implementations that
increasingly require the ability to interoperate flexibly between multiple data delivery styles
are raising the need for Oracle to have a cohesive offering. Tightened integration between
products of multiple data delivery styles is necessary for meeting such demand.
Pricing perception and availability of skills: Oracle's reference customers perceived that
the need for multiple products to achieve various desired functionality complicates pricing
and drives up costs. The cost of the products, relative to their perceived value, and the
availability of skills relating to the data integration product set are cited as challenges in
customer experience related to the nonproduct aspects of adoptions.
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Pervasive Software
Located in Austin, Texas, Pervasive Software (http://integration.pervasive.com) offers the
following products: Data Integrator, Metadata Manager, Integration Hub, DataCloud and
DataRush. The vendor's customer base is estimated at more than 5,400.
Note: At the time this Magic Quadrant was published, Actian had made an unsolicited, nonbinding
offer to acquire all outstanding stock of Pervasive Software. Pervasive's Board of Directors
instructed an independent financial advisor to solicit potential bids from interested parties and
engage with them, including Actian, regarding their interest in acquiring Pervasive, although the
company noted in an announcement that "there can be no assurance that the Board's continued
consideration of the Actian proposal or any alternative proposals that Pervasive may receive from
any other parties will result in a transaction with Actian or any other party."
Strengths
Revenue stability: Pervasive demonstrates a track record of positive revenue growth with
continued good capitalization. The percentage of revenue accrued from licenses as opposed
to professional services (including support) is increasing, which is important for a small
vendor because this represents annuity revenue in the future from the increased support
revenue related to these new sales. Average deal sizes are small; however, in 2012, the
average size increased by almost 20%.
Product depth and perceived value: Pervasive offers tools that support bulk/batch-oriented
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data delivery and provide capabilities for real-time messaging-style solutions and SOA. As in
2011, customers continue to utilize the broad range of support for data sources and target
types, including packaged applications, popular SaaS application APIs (such as for
salesforce.com), industry-standard message formats (such as EDI documents, X12, the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA] and Health Level Seven [HL7]),
and semistructured content repositories provided with the core products. Customer
references almost universally indicate the pricing as highly favorable.
Cloud and big data: In 2012, Pervasive has demonstrated its capability to serve as the data
integration engine for organizations using SaaS (such as salesforce.com) and adding
platform as a service (PaaS) for analytics (such as Google BigQuery) with its DataCloud
product. In 2012, Pervasive Galaxy (a data integration marketplace for user-developed and
Pervasive-vetted solutions) continued to grow, with more than 3,000 solution subscribers
and hundreds of products.
Customer experience: Ease of use, intuitive interfacing, excellent product support and a rich
set of connectors to platforms, sources and application data are all listed as positive
experiences by customers. From an interfacing perspective, Pervasive introduced its version
10 Web browser user interface (UI), which emphasized business user/analyst collaboration
on data integration efforts. Reduced incidences of software bugs are also cited with uses of
version 10. A significant benefit of the low TCO and ease of integrating Pervasive's solutions
with existing in-house data integration architectures for focused solutions is indicated by
references as well. Customers report that Pervasive's functional fit and vertical experience
(including business process knowledge) were important in their decision criteria. Pricing was
also considered a major driver when selecting Pervasive.
Cautions
North America-centric: The majority of Pervasive's customer base is in North America
(84%), and this has been consistent since 2009. While too small to be an effective global
delivery vendor, there is a perceived weakness outside of its North American base (local
skills, support, partners, references, etc.). Pervasive's reach signifies a strength when
approaching North American prospects, but its global footprint is limited from a broader
market perspective. In our reference survey, a significant number of respondents indicated a
desire for more European support.
Breadth of data integration styles and development tooling: Implementation of Pervasive's
tools beyond physical bulk data movement remains limited. Support for CDC remains a
relative weakness in comparison with major competitors in this market, although
implementations for data synchronization are reflecting growing interests and adoptions.
Pervasive does not provide data federation functionality, although support using, for
example, data access and joins, is available. Other challenges, as cited by customer
references, include support for metadata and modeling, uneven satisfaction of message
oriented movement functionality, and synergistic deployment of data quality capability as
part of data integration efforts. Rapid integration flow language (RIFL) is used in scripting
jobs and execution. References report that the language has some functional gaps and that
documentation is poor. Additionally, APIs and software development kits are the primary
support for Java, and .NET is reported as unsupported by users, although with version 10,
.NET interface components can be added.
Stability and version consistency: Customers report a lack of transparency in the process
flows and inconsistencies between the development and runtime environments, making
testing difficult and complicating moves into production. However, customers report that,
with version 10, the development and deployment environment is much improved.
Effectiveness of direct sales force: Some clients indicate that Pervasive's sales force has
not adequately represented the tools capabilities and use-case applications. Some
references report that they often must represent Pervasive to their internal peers regarding
its functionality and capabilities, which, in effect, means they are intervening in the sales
process on Pervasive's behalf.
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SAP
Located in Palo Alto, California, SAP (www.sap.com) offers the following products: Data
Integrator, Data Services, NetWeaver Process Integration, Sybase Replication Server and Data
Services OnDemand. The vendor's customer base is estimated at more than 10,000.
Strengths
Breadth of functionality: SAP has collected a good range of functional capabilities in this
market, spanning bulk-batch ETL, data federation, message-oriented data delivery and
CDC/replication. The combination of these capabilities allows the vendor to attract customers
seeking support for a variety of data integration patterns and use cases. The majority of
deployments center around the Data Services product, which exhibits strong support for
bulk-batch data delivery. Version 4.1 of Data Services added enhanced support for text
processing, relevant in dealing with unstructured data, Hadoop and other big data sources.
The product road map calls for synergies across more of the products via what the vendor
calls its "Real-Time Data Platform," with the Hana in-memory database technology at the
core, as well as an initial delivery of data integration PaaS functionality via Data Services
OnDemand.
Synergy with data quality and governance capabilities: Well-aligned with the significant
market trend of convergence between data integration and data quality functionality, SAP
tightly integrates data quality into its Data Services offering. The depth of integration is cited
by reference customers as a strength. In addition, SAP's product road map for Data Services
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and Information Steward aims to further extend this support and more actively embed
information governance into data integration processes.
Market presence and growth: As a large and incumbent (in many thousands of enterprises)
provider of applications and analytics solutions, SAP can naturally capture significant revenue
in this market by leveraging its broader customer base. Its success in doing so is reflected in
above-average revenue growth in the data integration tools market, as well as an increased
awareness and skill base for customers to leverage.
Cautions
Degree of integration across product set: Despite good support for each of the main data
integration styles, SAP's offerings lack deep integration in the form of a common
design/development environment and metadata repository. Products such as Replication
Server, NetWeaver Process Integration and the former Data Federator (now functionality
that is bundled with SAP's BI offering) share few capabilities with Data Services and are
deployed independently. Substantial product development work remains ahead of SAP to
achieve the ideal of all data integration styles driven from a common set of metadata
models, design environment and administrative tooling.
Diversity of deployment patterns and use cases: With the strong emphasis SAP has placed
on Data Services, it is natural that a majority of its data integration tool customer base is
active with ETL-type workloads — supporting bulk-batch data flow for BI purposes. However,
customers generally are not deploying the tools for additional use cases. In comparison to
competitors' deployments, a recent sample of SAP reference customers exhibited a narrower
range of usage, with limited examples of CDC and granular real-time data flow, data
federation, and messaging-oriented deployments.
Customer support and service experience: While comparative analyses over several years
show that SAP is making improvements in these areas, its scores from the recent reference
customer set are still lower than those for all major competitors. SAP's ongoing
improvements to its support portal appear to be partially helping in addressing customer
concerns. In addition, several reference customers cited quality challenges with professional
services engaged to deploy various aspects of the SAP data integration product set.
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SAS-DataFlux
Located in Cary, North Carolina, SAS-DataFlux (www.sas.com) offers the following products:
Enterprise Data Integration Server, DataFlux Data Management Platform, DataFlux Federation
Server, SAS Data Migration and SAS/Access. The vendor's customer base is estimated at more
than 13,000.
Strengths
Range of functionality: SAS delivers functionality to address many of the most active
segments of the data integration tool market, specifically ETL, data federation, CDC and real-
time data flow. This breadth of capabilities positions SAS well to engage in competing for
contemporary data integration tool demand amid larger and more established vendors in
this market.
Depth of integration with data quality functionality: The substantial strength of the
DataFlux data quality capabilities is cited by SAS reference customers as a main value point
and reason for their selection of the vendor's data integration tools. Consistent with market
demand and convergence trends, SAS continues to provide seamless integration that
enables customers to embed data quality operations into their data integration workloads.
More than 80% of a recent reference customer sample set indicated using these capabilities.
Size, viability and global market presence: With a long track record in related markets, a
very large customer base and a local presence in more countries than most of its
competition, SAS has a significant base of strength from which to grow in this market. During
2011, Gartner estimates that the vendor grew at slightly higher than the market average
growth rate. SAS can maintain and even accelerate this growth by targeting a greater
diversity of data integration tool deployment patterns and use cases.
Market vision and product road map: Recent delivery of new versions of Enterprise Data
Integration Server, DataFlux Data Management Platform and DataFlux Federation Server
align well with key market demand trends, such as support for big data environments, cloud
enablement, richer metadata management functionality, and improved ease of deployment
and manageability. Specifically, current and future releases offer expanded support for in-
database transformation execution, connectivity to increasingly popular big data
technologies such as Hadoop and numerous usability enhancements.
Cautions
Diversity of deployment patterns and use cases: With SAS' strategy and experience base
being rooted in analytics, it is natural that deployments of its data integration tools heavily
reflect that bias. The reference customer sample shows far less diversity in use cases than
other market leaders, with the vast majority of customers indicating they have deployed the
tools in support of BI, with far less activity around other use cases. In addition, the customer
base also reflects heavy usage for bulk-batch data delivery (ETL), but limited usage for other
data integration styles. As demand has already expanded and is rapidly growing beyond
ETL, SAS will need to rapidly grow its experience base and proof points for other use cases
and delivery styles.
Perception of pricing and value relative to cost: Customers and prospects continue to cite
SAS' product licensing approach and price points as a challenge. For many customers, the
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perception of high price, an inflexible licensing model and the complexity of the technology
leads to a feeling of dissatisfaction regarding value and TCO. To start to address this
challenge, SAS recently established a new set of use-case-specific bundles that enable
customers to purchase only the subset of the portfolio most relevant to their needs. For
customers with deeper SAS technology experience, particularly longtime SAS customers,
complexity appears to be less of a concern and perceptions of TCO are more positive.
Recent organization and strategy changes: In 4Q11, the DataFlux sales force was
absorbed into the SAS sales organization, potentially diminishing the focus on the DataFlux
brand and technologies, as distinct from SAS's analytics offerings. SAS recently announced a
reorganization that eliminates the DataFlux organization as a stand-alone entity and
combines all remaining DataFlux functions into SAS. This move raises questions about the
importance of the DataFlux brand and SAS's desire to focus on nonanalytics information
infrastructure opportunities. SAS states that the rationale for this organizational change is to
increase its scale in the market by using SAS's substantial resources and customer base to
better compete against other large incumbent providers.
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Syncsort
Located in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, Syncsort (www.syncsort.com) offers the product
DMExpress. The vendor's customer base is estimated at more than 1,000.
Strengths
Bulk-batch strength and cost of ownership: Syncsort continues to provide high-
performance bulk-batch (ETL) capabilities with attractive cost of ownership and faster time to
implementation than many competitors. These strengths continues to benefit the vendor,
given the demand for targeted functionality and superior time to value. Although DMExpress
is less mature in advanced functional capabilities, such as metadata management and data
quality, its ease of use and scalability prompt customers to select it for targeted
implementation scenarios. The latest release of DMExpress adds expanded real-time support
via interaction with message queues, deeper integration with Hadoop and expanded
connectivity options — all items that align with current and emerging market demand.
Track record and responsiveness: With 40 years' experience in high-performance data
processing, sustained profitability, and a large and loyal customer base, Syncsort has a solid
foundation on which to grow its market presence. The vendor continues to evolve its
management team and to strengthen its organization in general, by attracting experienced
resources from competitors. Syncsort offers a high quality of service and support, and many
customers identify product technical support and their overall relationship with the vendor as
positives. The combination of these characteristics and the increased demand for targeted
and cost-effective solutions has contributed to the vendor's above-average revenue growth
rate and strong customer base expansion in this market.
Expanding range of use cases: Syncsort has historically been adopted to resolve
performance bottlenecks in ETL processes supporting BI and analytics. Recent reference
customer samples show a clear trend toward broader adoption, with many customers now
using the technology to fuel data migration, MDM and operational integration needs.
Cautions
Metadata management functionality compared with the competition: Syncsort continues
to add metadata capabilities with each new release. However, reference customers continue
to cite metadata management as an area of relative weakness. In particular, with Syncsort's
expansion into big data environments, the increased distribution of information assets and
complexity of such environments means that metadata discovery, modeling and dynamic use
of metadata to drive runtime execution of data integration workloads will be critical.
Capabilities and product road map for breadth of data integration styles: Syncsort's data
integration roots are squarely focused on bulk-batch and physical data movement, and the
vendor's strengths and product road map for core capabilities continue to focus there. While
the product road map includes expanded support for real-time data flow, this will be
achieved via connectivity to things outside the Syncsort technology set, rather than inherent
within it. Organizations seeking providers with a breadth of data integration styles and
limited capabilities to integrate disparate solutions will find this to be a weakness.
Release management and quality assurance: While the Syncsort customer base rates the
vendor positively overall for product support and customer service, reference customers do
occasionally cite challenges with bugs in new releases, as well as technical complexity of
version upgrades.
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Talend
Located in Los Altos, California, and Suresnes, France, Talend (www.talend.com) offers the
following products: Talend Open Studio for Data Integration, Talend Open Studio for Big Data and
Talend Enterprise Data Integration. The vendor's customer base is estimated at more than 2,500.
Strengths
Breadth of functionality and integration: The evolution of Talend Unified Platform improved
the synergy between Talend's data integration and application integration capabilities, which
aligns with demand trends. Integrated product sets built on a single code base provide
reduced complexity and enhanced customer experience in implementations, such as efforts
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for modeling data integration processes.
Usability of core functionality: Reference customers generally report ease of use and
speed of deployment as strengths of Talend's technology. They also consider the
configurability of Talend's tools to be flexible enough to adapt to the business requirements
of data integration processes. The availability of artifacts built by Talend's developer and
user community has contributed to high developer productivity.
Cost model: Most Talend customers are attracted to the tool because of its low price relative
to most competitors. The combination of the free Open Studio for Data Integration product
and modest subscription pricing for Enterprise Data Integration represent an attractive
option for customers seeking lower-cost options and continues to generate positive
customer perceptions of value relative to cost.
Links to related data management capabilities: As part of its portfolio that the data
integration functionality is able to leverage, Talend offers data quality functionality,
enterprise service bus and MDM solutions. Talend's ability to position a broad set of data
management capabilities that are able to interoperate with data integration processes is
well-aligned with demand trends, along with supporting requirements for processing of big
data, interacting with cloud data sources and deploying on cloud infrastructure.
Cautions
Implementation scope and vendor mind share: Talend's tools are predominantly deployed
for bulk/batch-oriented data delivery, with limited visibility in the market for supporting
demand trends across a broad range of data delivery needs. Opportunities remain to
increase the range of adoptions, such as using Talend for message-based data delivery and
granular, low-latency data capture and propagation. The predominant appeal of Talend's
tools is established with the developer community, but traction for engaging IT management
in customer organizations is more of a challenge for the vendor, relative to its competition.
Product reliability: Feedback on Talend's technology in this market indicated concerns
related to product stability, particularly for new releases. References indicated difficulty in
expanding implementations for a large-scale environment, with concerns regarding reliability,
bugs, incidences of recurring bugs formerly fixed and limited documented guidance. Talend is
attempting to address these challenges through improvements in its testing and quality
assurance processes, as well as with more formalized and documented processes and
timelines for release management.
Customer support and service experience: Despite a generally positive perception of the
capabilities and value of the technology, Talend references report an overall decline in
quality of service and support. Areas of challenges cited include support for issue resolution,
product upgrade, technical help for using added or enhanced components, and
documentation. These are common issues for vendors that evolve as fast-growing
businesses, but at times are challenged to keep up with customer demand, and can
adversely affect Talend's ability to capture and retain enterprise-level deployments.
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Vendors Added or Dropped
We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets
change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or
MarketScope may change over time. A vendor appearing in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one
year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that
vendor. This may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation
criteria, or a change of focus by a vendor.
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Added
No vendors have been added to this Magic Quadrant.
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Dropped
No vendors have been dropped from this Magic Quadrant.
iWay Software now appears as Information Builders-iWay Software.
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Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
To be included in this Magic Quadrant, vendors must possess within their technology portfolio the
subset of capabilities identified by Gartner as the most critical from within the overall range of
capabilities expected of data integration tools. Specifically, vendors must deliver the following
functional requirements:
Range of connectivity/adapter support (sources and targets): native access to relational
DBMS products, plus access to nonrelational legacy data structures, flat files, XML and
message queues
Mode of connectivity/adapter support (against a range of sources and targets): bulk/batch
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and CDC
Data delivery modes support: bulk/batch (ETL-style) delivery, plus at least one additional
mode (federated views, message-oriented delivery or data replication)
Data transformation support: at a minimum, packaged capabilities for basic transformations
(such as data type conversions, string manipulations and calculations)
Metadata and data modeling support: automated metadata discovery, lineage and impact
analysis reporting, ability to synchronize metadata across multiple instances of the tool, and
an open metadata repository, including mechanisms for bidirectional sharing of metadata
with other tools
Design and development support: graphical design/development environment and team
development capabilities (such as version control and collaboration)
Data governance support: ability to interoperate at a metadata level with data-profiling
and/or data quality tools
Runtime platform support: Windows, Unix or Linux operating systems
Service enablement (ability to deploy functionality as services conforming to SOA principles)
In addition, vendors had to satisfy the following quantitative requirements regarding their market
penetration and customer base:
They must generate at least $20 million of annual software revenue from data integration
tools or maintain at least 300 maintenance-paying customers for their data integration tools.
They must support data integration tool customers in at least two of the major geographic
regions (North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the
Asia/Pacific region).
We excluded vendors that focus on only one specific data subject area (for example, the
integration of customer data only), a single industry, or on only their own data models and
architectures.
Many other vendors of data integration tools exist beyond those included in this Magic Quadrant.
However, most do not meet the above criteria and, therefore, we have not included them in our
analysis. Market trends during the past three years indicate that organizations want to use data
integration tools that provide flexible data access, delivery and operational management
capabilities within a single-vendor solution. Excluded vendors frequently provide products to
address one very specific style of data delivery (for example, data federation only) and cannot
support other styles. Others provide a range of functionality, but operate only in a specific
technical environment. Still others operate only in a single region or support only narrow,
departmental implementations. Some vendors meet all the functional, deployment and geographic
requirements, but are very new to the data integration tool market, and have limited revenue and
few production customers.
The following vendors are sometimes considered by Gartner clients, along with those appearing in
this Magic Quadrant, when deployment needs match their specific capabilities (this list also
includes recent market entrants with relevant capabilities). This list is not intended to be
comprehensive:
Ab Initio, Lexington, Massachusetts (www.abinitio.com) — Application development toolbox
(Co>Operating System) and component library for metadata management and data
integration.
Adeptia, Chicago, Illinois (www.adeptia.com) — ETL Suite for bulk/batch-oriented data
integration patterns, and other integration products, such as ESB Suite for application-to-
application data consistency.
Alebra Technologies, New Brighton, Minnesota (www.alebra.com) — Parallel Data Mover for
cross-platform file and database copying and sharing.
Altibase, Palo Alto, California (www.altibase.com) — Data Stream Middleware for supporting
event-based data delivery for application and data integration.
Apatar, Walnut, California (www.apatar.com) — Open-source data integration tools focused
on ETL and data federation scenarios.
Arbutus Software, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada (www.arbutussoftware.com) —
Provides solutions for mainframe legacy data connectivity and access, in support of data
integration and other use cases.
Astera Software, Simi Valley, California (www.astera.com) — Provides ETL, CDC and B2B
data integration capabilities via the Centerprise Data Integrator product.
Attunity, Burlington, Massachusetts (www.attunity.com) — A range of data-integration-
oriented products, including adapters (Attunity Connect), CDC (Attunity CDC), replication
(Attunity Replicate) and data federation (Attunity Federate) for various platforms and
database/file types.
Axway, Phoenix, Arizona (www.axway.com) — Offers software and services, such as B2B
data integration capabilities in support of various data sources, including variants of XML and
EDI.
BackOffice Associates, South Harwich, Massachusetts (www.boaweb.com) — Offers
services and technology, including data integration capabilities, for data migrations, with a
focus on SAP and other ERP environments.
BIReady, New York, New York and Langbroek, The Netherlands (http://biready.com) —
Dynamic model resolution tool for rationalizing, deploying and populating analytics models,
coupled with a data integration engine for transformations between models.
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C3 Business Solutions, Melbourne, Australia (http://c3businesssolutions.com) — Offers a
simplified set of tools for consolidating data, validating data and acquiring data from sources
including Excel, Access, comma-separated values (CSV), and fixed-width and XML-standard
data formats.
CA Technologies, Islandia, New York (www.ca.com) — Advantage Data Transformer provides
ETL-oriented data integration. InfoRefiner provides replication and propagation capabilities
for mainframe data repositories.
CDB Software, Houston, Texas (www.cdbsoftware.com) — CDB/Delta provides CDC and
replication capabilities for IBM DB2 on the z/OS platform.
Composite Software, San Mateo, California (www.compositesw.com) — Composite Data
Virtualization Platform provides data federation capabilities and supports the delivery of data
access services.
DataRoket, Washington, D.C. (www.dataroket.com) — Offers ETL and data federation
capabilities via the DataRoket product suite.
DataStreams, Korea (www.datastreams.co.kr) — Provides capabilities for ETL, CDC and
near-real-time integration of data via a range of offerings, including TeraStream and
DeltaStream.
Datawatch, Chelmsford, Massachusetts (www.datawatch.com) — The Monarch Data Pump
product provides ETL functionality with a bias toward extracting data from report text, PDF
files, spreadsheets and other less-structured data sources.
DBSync, Brentwood, Tennessee (www.mydbsync.com) — Offers the dbsync integration
platform for integration of data between databases and applications, both on-premises and
via SaaS.
Dell Boomi, Berwyn, Pennsylvania (www.boomi.com) — Acquired by Dell, Boomi provides
technology for integration of data to and between SaaS-based applications and data
sources.
Denodo Technologies, Palo Alto, California, Madrid and London (www.denodo.com) — The
Denodo Platform provides data federation and mashup enablement capabilities for joining
structured data sources with data from websites, documents and other less-structured
repositories.
DFI, Dublin, Ireland (www.datafusion.ie) — Positioned as a data and content fusion
technology, the Infinity solution supports federated approaches to data integration.
Diyotta, Charlotte, North Carolina (www.diyotta.com) — Focuses on extraction, loading,
transformation (ELT)-style workloads leveraging database appliances, such as IBM Netezza,
via its Diyotta offering.
ETI, Austin, Texas, acquired by Versata (www.versata.com) — The ETI solution has a code-
generation architecture focused on bulk/batch-oriented data movement.
ETL Solutions, Bangor, U.K. (www.etlsolutions.com) — Transformation Manager provides a
metadata-driven toolset for the authoring, testing, debugging and deployment of various
data integration requirements.
Gamma Soft, Ivry-sur-Seine, France (www.gamma-soft.com) — Supports CDC and data
replication for various heterogeneous data source types via a data distribution product.
GSS Group, Markham, Ontario, Canada (www.gssgrp.com) — Vigilance Xpress is a Web-
based solution for SQL Server data marts supporting Microsoft's .NET Framework, SQL Server
and SQL Server Reporting Services.
GT Software, Atlanta, Georgia (www.gtsoftware.com) — The Ivory Suite product line
supports connectivity to, and integration with, mainframe-based data sources of various
types.
HiT Software, San Jose, California (www.hitsw.com) — Offers database replication
(DBMoto), database-to-XML transformation and mapping (Allora), and DB2 connectivity
products. HiT was acquired by BackOffice Associates in 2010, but still operates under the HiT
brand.
HVR Software, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (www.hvr-software.com) — The HVR Realtime
Data Integration product supports CDC, propagation and replication patterns against
various data source and platform types.
Innovative Routines International (The CoSort Company), Melbourne, Florida
(www.iri.com) — Its Fast Extract and SortCL tools provide for the rapid unloading and
transformation of data in Oracle and IBM DB2 databases in support of ETL processes.
Javlin, Arlington, Virginia (www.javlin.eu/en) — Offers the CloverETL product for bulk/batch-
oriented data movement.
Jitterbit, Oakland, California (www.jitterbit.com) — Freely downloadable software with a
focus on application integration (event- and message-based) and data integration.
JumpMind, Columbus, Ohio (www.jumpmind.com) — The open-source SymmetricDS product
set offers data replication capabilities for a variety of relational DBMS environments.
Kapow Software, Palo Alto, California (www.kapowsoftware.com) — The Kapow Katalyst
and Kapow Kapplets provide a browser-based approach to integrating data across on-
premises and cloud-based applications and websites.
Kinetic Networks, San Francisco, California (www.kineticnetworks.com and www.ketl.org) —
Supports ETL capabilities via KETL, an open-source data integration tool.
Metatomix, Dedham, Massachusetts, acquired by Versata (www.versata.com) — Follows a
semantics-based approach to the creation of data services and federated views of data
across multiple data sources.
Nimaya, Washington, D.C. (www.nimaya.com) — ActionBridge technology enables virtual
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federation of data across on-premises and SaaS-based data sources.
Pentaho, Orlando, Florida (www.pentaho.com and kettle.pentaho.com) — A provider of
open-source BI solutions, Pentaho offers data integration tools as part of its portfolio by
leveraging the Kettle open-source project and providing services and support.
Pitney Bowes Software, Stamford, Connecticut (www.pb.com) — A software and service
division of customer communications management vendor Pitney Bowes, it competes in the
data integration tool market with the Spectrum Technology Platform, which includes ETL
capabilities.
Progress Software, Bedford, Massachusetts (www.progress.com) — The DataXtend and
DataDirect product lines provide tools for data access, replication and synchronization.
QlikTech, Radnor, Pennsylvania (www.qlikview.com) — Acquired by QlikTech, the QlikView
Expressor product is based on a semantic approach to designing and managing data
integration processes.
Quest Software, Aliso Viejo, California (www.quest.com) — Acquired by Dell in 3Q12, Quest
Software's SharePlex provides real-time replication support for Oracle DBMS environments
and is aimed primarily at high-availability applications.
Red Hat, Raleigh, North Carolina (www.redhat.com) — The Teiid products support the
creation of data models and model-driven federated views of data.
RedPoint, Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts (www.redpoint.net) — Acquired by DataLever in
4Q11, the vendor offers RedPoint Data Management supporting ETL workloads and
integrated data quality capabilities.
Relational Solutions, Westlake, Ohio (www.relationalsolutions.com) — The BlueSky
Integration Studio provides ETL capabilities in a simplified, low-cost toolset that runs in the
Windows environment.
Safe Software, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada (www.safe.com) — The Feature
Manipulation Engine (FME) technology platform delivers ETL capabilities for spatially oriented
data sources commonly used in geographic information system applications.
SchemaLogic, Kirkland, Washington (www.schemalogic.com) — SchemaLogic Enterprise
Suite enables the creation and maintenance of data models and business models, and the
ability to propagate models and data across applications.
Scribe, Manchester, New Hampshire (www.scribesoft.com) — Provides data migration and
integration solutions supporting deployments of business applications, with a focus on
Microsoft Dynamics.
Sesame Software, Los Angeles, California (www.sesamesoftware.com) — Offers the
Relational Junction product suite for synchronization of data between popular packaged and
SaaS applications, with a focus on ETL-oriented patterns of integration.
SnapLogic, San Mateo, Califormia (www.snaplogic.com) — SnapLogic Integration Platform
supports real-time and federated integration of data with a focus on diverse data sources,
including SaaS- and cloud-based sources, and via Web-oriented architectural approaches.
Software AG, Darmstadt, Germany (www.softwareag.com) — The CentraSite product
provides data and metadata federation capabilities, and is geared toward SOA deployments.
The Software AG product line provides process-oriented integration capabilities.
SQData, Addison, Texas (www.sqdata.com) — The SQData product line provides CDC and
ETL functionality focused on delivering mainframe data sources and popular relational
DBMSs.
Stone Bond, Houston, Texas (www.stonebond.com) — Supports both federated/virtualized
data integration and physical data movement via the Enterprise Enabler technology set.
Sypherlink, Dublin, Ohio (www.sypherlink.com) — A subsidiary of Saama Technology, the
vendor provides metadata discovery and mapping via Harvester, and access to data sources
for the creation of integrated views via Exploratory Warehouse.
Vision Solutions, Irvine, California (www.visionsolutions.com) — Real-time database
replication functionality is provided by the Double-Take Share product.
WhereScape, Portland, Oregon (www.wherescape.com) — WhereScape Red enables the
rapid creation and maintenance of data warehouses, including ETL functionality.
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Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Gartner analysts evaluate technology providers on the quality and efficacy of the processes,
systems, methods or procedures that enable IT providers' performance to be competitive, efficient
and effective, and to positively impact revenue, retention and reputation. Ultimately, technology
providers are judged on their ability to capitalize on their vision, and their success in doing so.
We evaluate vendors' Ability to Execute in the data integration tool market by using the following
criteria:
Product/Service. How well the vendor supports the range of data integration functionality
required by the market, the manner (architecture) in which this functionality is delivered and
the overall usability of the tools. Product capabilities are critical to the success of data
integration tool deployments and, therefore, receive a High weighting.
Overall Viability. This refers to the magnitude of the vendor's financial resources, and the
continuity of its people and technology. We place a High weighting on this criterion, which
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affects the practical success of the business unit or organization in generating business
results.
Sales Execution/Pricing. This refers to the effectiveness of the vendor's pricing model, and
the effectiveness of its direct and indirect sales channels. This criterion is weighted High due
to the sustained scrutiny on cost issues and the highly competitive nature of this market.
Market Responsiveness and Track Record. This is the degree to which the vendor has
demonstrated the ability to respond successfully to market demand for data integration
capabilities over an extended period, and how well the vendor acted on the vision of prior
years.
Marketing Execution. This is the overall effectiveness of the vendor's marketing efforts,
which impacts its mind share, market share and account penetration. It also refers to the
ability of the vendor to adapt to changing demands in the market by aligning its product
message with new trends and end-user interests.
Customer Experience. This refers to the level of satisfaction expressed by customers with
the vendor's product support and professional services; their overall relationship with the
vendor; and their perceptions of the value of the vendor's data integration tools relative to
costs and expectations. In this iteration of the Magic Quadrant, we have retained a
weighting of High for this criterion, to reflect buyer's continued scrutiny of these
considerations as a result of economic conditions and budgetary pressures. Analysis and
rating of vendors against this criterion is driven directly by responses from customers who
participated in the reference customer survey that Gartner conducted as part of the process
of developing this Magic Quadrant.
Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Product/Service High
Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization) High
Sales Execution/Pricing High
Market Responsiveness and Track Record Standard
Marketing Execution Standard
Customer Experience High
Operations No rating
Source: Gartner (October 2012)
Completeness of Vision
Gartner analysts evaluate technology providers on their ability to convincingly articulate logical
statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs, and
competitive forces, as well as how they map to Gartner's position. Ultimately, technology
providers are assessed on their understanding of the ways that market forces can be exploited to
create opportunities.
We assess vendors' Completeness of Vision for the data integration tools market by using the
following criteria:
Market Understanding. This is the degree to which the vendor leads the market in
recognizing opportunities represented by trends and new directions (technology, product,
services or otherwise), and its ability to adapt to significant market inertia and disruptions.
Given the dynamic nature of this market, this criterion receives a weighting of High.
Marketing Strategy. This refers to the degree to which the vendor's marketing approach
aligns with and/or exploits emerging trends and the overall direction of the market.
Sales Strategy. This refers to the alignment of the vendor's sales model with the ways in
which customers' preferred buying approaches will evolve over time.
Offering (Product) Strategy. This is the degree to which the vendor's product road map
reflects demand trends in the market, fills current gaps or weaknesses, and includes
developments that create competitive differentiation and increased value for customers. In
addition, given the requirement for data integration tools to support diverse environments
from a data domain, platform and vendor-mix perspective, we assess vendors on the degree
of openness of their technology and product strategy. With the growth in diversity of data
and environments involved in data integration initiatives, this criterion receives a weighting
of High.
Business Model. This refers to the overall approach the vendor takes to execute its strategy
for the data integration tool market.
Vertical/Industry Strategy. This refers to the degree of emphasis the vendor places on
vertical solutions, and the vendor's depth of vertical market expertise.
Innovation. This refers to the degree to which the vendor demonstrates creative energy in
the form of enhancing its practices and product capabilities, as well as introducing thought-
leading and differentiating ideas and product plans that have the potential to significantly
extend or reshape the market in a way that adds real value for customers. Given the pace of
expansion of data integration requirements and the highly competitive nature of the market,
this criterion receives a weighting of High.
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Geographic Strategy. This refers to the vendor's strategy for expanding its reach into
markets beyond its home region/country, and its approach to achieving global presence (for
example, its direct local presence and use of resellers and distributors).
Table 2. Completeness of Vision
Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Market Understanding High
Marketing Strategy Standard
Sales Strategy Standard
Offering (Product) Strategy High
Business Model Standard
Vertical/Industry Strategy Low
Innovation High
Geographic Strategy Standard
Source: Gartner (October 2012)
Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders in the data integration tool market are frontrunners in the convergence of single-purpose
tools into an offering that supports a range of data delivery styles. These vendors are strong in
the more traditional data integration patterns. They also support newer patterns and provide
capabilities that enable data services in the context of SOA. Leaders have significant mind share
in the market, and resources skilled in their tools are readily available. These vendors establish
market trends, to a large degree, by providing new functional capabilities in their products, and by
identifying new types of business problems to which data integration tools can bring significant
value. Examples of deployments that span multiple projects and types of use cases are common
among Leaders' customers.
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Challengers
Challengers are well-positioned in light of the key trends in the data integration tool market, such
as the need to support multiple styles of data delivery. However, they may not provide a
comprehensive breadth of functionality, or may be limited to specific technical environments or
application domains. In addition, their vision may be hampered by the lack of a coordinated
strategy across the various products in their data integration tool portfolio. Challengers can vary
significantly with regard to their financial strength and global presence. They are often large
players in related markets that have only recently placed an emphasis on data integration tools.
Challengers generally have substantial customer bases, although implementations are often of a
single-project nature, or reflect multiple projects of a single type (for example, all ETL-oriented
use cases).
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Visionaries
Visionaries have a solid understanding of emerging technology and business trends, or a position
that is well-aligned with current demand, but they lack market awareness or credibility beyond
their customer base or a single-application domain. Visionaries may also fail to provide a
comprehensive set of product capabilities. They may be new entrants lacking the installed base
and global presence of larger vendors, although they could also be large, established players in
related markets that have only recently placed an emphasis on data integration tools. The
growing emphasis on aligning data integration tools with the market's demand for interoperability
of delivery styles, convergence of related offerings (such as data integration and data quality
tools), metadata modeling and support for emerging analytics environments, among other things,
is creating fresh challenges for which vendors must demonstrate vision.
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Niche Players
Niche Players have gaps in both their Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute, often lacking
key aspects of product functionality and/or exhibiting a narrow focus on their own architectures
and installed bases. These vendors have little mind share in the market and are not recognized
as proven providers of data integration tools for enterprise-class deployments. Many Niche
Players have very strong offerings for a specific range of data integration problems (for example,
a particular set of technical environments or application domains) and deliver substantial value for
their customers in that segment.
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Context
Data integration capabilities are at the heart of powering the frictionless sharing of data across all
organizational and system boundaries. Pressures grow in this market as vendors are challenged
to address demand trends for innovation on two perspectives — the ability to enhance traditional
practices and to introduce new models and practices.
Demand trends in 2012 are requiring vendors to increase flexibility in approaching comprehensive
data integration needs and demonstrating alignment to expectations on time to deployment,
range of data integration patterns, sentiment for cost and delivery models, and synergy with a
broad set of data management initiatives. Business imperatives to confront new information
challenges are driving the need for a realignment of technology vision in this market. Meanwhile,
IT leaders continue to emphasize requirements for high-quality customer service and support, and
for extending implementations beyond analytics-related uses to support operational data
consistency, data migration, cloud-related integration and data services in SOA initiatives.
Many of the vendors in this market exhibit offerings that are competing at higher levels of
maturity; however, at the same time, buyers are becoming more ambitious about realigning and
revisiting their data integration focus, in addition to obtaining core functions, as requirements for
better alignment and interoperability between capabilities grow. The competitive landscape
reflects vendors' pursuit of a more comprehensive offering strategy to support a broad range of
use cases and to capitalize on new demand. IT leaders are demanding synergy between
functions, performance and scalability in data integration tools, so that they operate well with the
same vendor's technology stack and, increasingly, interoperate with data management initiatives
in areas such as data quality, MDM and metadata management, as well as cope with the big data
explosion in the extreme level of information challenges.
As buyers seek to address data integration as a critical aspect of a coherent information
management capability, the need to integrate disparate data sources and new data types into a
cohesive and usable set of information will continue to grow, with data integration capabilities
becoming a critical part of an information capabilities framework. While the demand of enterprise-
class usage is the mainstay of the data integration tool market, limited-scope offerings for
specialized or project-oriented capabilities are seeing resurging interest in organizations pursuing
dedicated data delivery styles or those in the early stages of implementing their data integration
strategy.
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Market Overview
The discipline of data integration comprises the practices, architectural techniques and tools for
achieving consistent access to, and delivery of, data across the spectrum of data subject areas
and data structure types in the enterprise, to meet the data consumption requirements of all
applications and business processes.
Data integration capabilities are at the heart of the information capabilities framework (see "The
Information Capabilities Framework: An Aligned Vision for Information Infrastructure") and will
power the frictionless sharing of data across all organizational and system boundaries. Business
drivers, such as the imperative for speed to market, the agility to change business processes and
models, and the desire to detect and harness patterns and capture events, are forcing
organizations to manage their data assets differently. As such, data integration is a critical
component of an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy and information
infrastructure (see "Gartner's Enterprise Information Management Framework Evolves to Meet
Today's Business Demands" and "Information Management in the 21st Century") that can
address these data-oriented issues.
Gartner estimates that the data integration tool market was $1.9 billion at the end of 2011, an
increase of 15.3% from 2010. While the forecast growth in 2012 is expected to slow considerably
as the uncertain macroeconomic environment drives increased caution in organizations, data
integration is considered a strategic priority by many organizations and the market is seeing
some of the highest growth rates of all the enterprise software markets. A projected five-year
compound annual growth rate of nearly 9.0% will bring the total to more than $2.8 billion by 2016
(see "Forecast: Enterprise Software Markets, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 3Q12 Update").
The market for data integration tools has been exhibiting substantial offerings of increasing
maturity that are becoming capable of the comprehensive functionalities, high performance and
scalability needed to support enterprise-scale data integration. Buyers in this market continue to
expand their usage and seek vendor technologies to serve a range of data integration
capabilities applicable to a variety of use cases. This competitive landscape reflects vendor pursuit
of a more comprehensive set of product offerings that together form their data integration tool
portfolio, for supporting a broad range of uses and capitalizing on new demand.
Changes in the positioning of vendors in this iteration of the Magic Quadrant are driven not only
by vendors' activities in delivering new product capabilities, but also their degree of success in
targeting contemporary demands.
Momentum for Enterprise-Scale Data Integration Approaches Continues
With the ongoing evolution of the data integration tool market, organizations that recognize the
value of a comprehensive data integration strategy are demonstrating proficiencies for
standardizing enterprise-scale tools and skills to address a diversity of data integration problem
types using a range of architectural styles and patterns of data delivery. Such adoptions have
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reduced the number of tactical data integration tools with a chosen or enforced enterprise
standard. Organizations in this category are delivering data in ways beyond conventional
bulk/batch movement, to include nonbulk approaches for replication, federation and message-
based integration. In moving away from having data integration requirements met via disparate
interfaces and tools, forward-thinking enterprises are beginning to pursue the architectural
concept of a data integration hub to address these needs (see "Data Integration Hubs: Drivers,
Benefits and Challenges of an Increasingly Popular Implementation Approach"). Also gaining
interest is in the approach of service orientation to address needs for the consistent, yet flexible,
delivery of data. Enterprises that are maturing in their adoption of data integration tools are
emphasizing common design tooling, metadata and runtime architecture applicable across data
integration efforts. Vendors with established track records and strong leadership exhibit support
for comprehensive data integration patterns — a core requirement in this market segment —
while providing high-quality service and support to their customers and having a perceived high
value.
Project-Oriented Data Integration Approaches Regain Interest
While the demand for enterprise-class usage has supplanted former, special-purpose-built data
integration tool submarkets, such as ETL, and limited-scope offerings for specialized capabilities,
such as data synchronization and migration, a resurgence of demand in organizations pursuing
dedicated data delivery styles is gathering momentum. A growing number of organizations
without a standardized data integration approach are evaluating best-of-breed offerings, and
have engaged in inquiries with Gartner during the past year regarding specialized vendors with
tools for supporting specific data delivery capabilities. Some enterprises that have implemented
an enterprise standard for their data integration tools are seeking to support new business
requirements, such as a short-term marketing campaign or interacting with data in a cloud
service, and desire to expand data integration functions via ways or technologies that accelerate
time to deployment, with increased ease of use and at reduced implementation costs. The span
across Challengers, Visionaries and relatively recent Leaders on the Magic Quadrant includes
providers that are still building their brand strength in this market and are in the evolutionary
stages of their technology toward a comprehensive, well-integrated data integration toolset. This
group of vendors is well-positioned to capture the market demand of organizations that are
growing their proficiency in data delivery and use cases, and are in need of a vendor that is
expanding its toolset at a pace that matches their enterprise needs. Niche Players find
applicability among and appeal to some enterprises in this buyer category, due to interest in the
characteristics of specialized functionality (for example, ETL only) and the fact that buyers are not
averse to tool brand recognition in the market. Buyers in this category are well-prepared to
deploy and maintain data integration tools from multiple vendors.
Adoptions Seek to Benefit From Cost and Delivery Models
Approaches to the pricing and licensing of data integration tools, as well as the delivery models
through which they are deployed, continue to evolve. In addition to the increasing interest in low-
cost solutions (commercial or open source) due to budgetary constraints and the perception of
high-cost models for solutions offered by some of the larger and incumbent competitors, an
increasing number of organizations are seeking as-a-service delivery models for focused data
integration capabilities, such as data integration PaaS, which operate on a cloud infrastructure
and offer pay-per-use pricing, and are gaining early adoption (see "Data in the Cloud: Harness
the Changing Nature of Data Integration"). Driven by diversifying business demands, providers of
data integration technologies are adapting to make new delivery models available. Organizations
continue to apply lessons learned from the economic challenges of recent years to scrutinize their
investments and optimize their costs. Interest in low-cost, rapid-time-to-value and "good enough"
data integration capabilities are spurring the emergence of alternative ways of pricing and
delivering data integration technologies through open-source and cloud-based models.
Demand for Synergy Between Data Integration and the Broad Portfolio of Data Management
Initiatives
A growing emphasis on aligning strategy and future direction in market understanding, offering
strategy, and the degree of adaptability to capitalize on new challenges are driving a renewed
vision and focus among buyers and providers. During the past three to five years, many providers
have expanded their support for data integration offerings with more comprehensive data
delivery styles, tightened links to data quality tools and an extended focus toward a model-driven
approach that leverages common metadata across their technology portfolio. In addition,
overlaps in some areas of data integration and application integration represent opportunities —
for IT leaders responsible for integration infrastructure — to pursue both disciplines in a
synergistic way. Evolving patterns of how data is produced and consumed are creating new
expectations in buyers. While offerings in this market are reaching a higher level of maturity,
buyers are exhibiting renewed vigor and ambition — toward aligning and revisiting their data
integration focus, in addition to obtaining core functions — as the need for better alignment and
interoperability among capabilities grows. Enterprises are beginning to seek abilities to exploit big
data for use in business decisions and processes. This involves integrating an extreme level of
information from emerging sources (such as big data and unstructured data or content), and also
combining disparate data sources and new data types into a usable, cohesive set. Growing
activities among data integration technology providers are seen in tool enhancements, to address
trends and market demand and to provide early offerings.
Extending Data Integration Capabilities to a Wide Range of Use Cases
Use cases for data integration tools are becoming more diversified as buyers procure tools with
the intent to support a wide range of projects and initiatives. While the established deployment
of data integration tools for BI, analytics and data warehousing initiatives remains most
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significant, the growing complexity in usage scenarios and requirements for diverse use cases are
fueling demand. Uses of federated views of data to leverage distributed enterprise data in the
logical data warehouse are gaining early interest to support ways to aggregate and provide data
rapidly to the business. Data migrations in support of modernization and consolidation initiatives
represent a fast-growing area of demand, with data integration capabilities (and the related
technology area of data quality) providing critical infrastructure for such efforts. As MDM programs
increase in number and scope, organizations also seek to apply investments in data integration
technology to those initiatives, because movement, transformation and federation of master data
is a fundamental component. Furthermore, the synchronization of data between operational
applications and across enterprise boundaries (between trading partners or between on-
premises and cloud-based applications) also represents an area of growth. Increasingly, end-user
organizations are deploying data integration services beneath (and in support of) wider SOA
initiatives.
Buyers are increasingly seeking to align their tool choices to resonate with a vendor's
understanding of market leadership, to which the vendor recognizes opportunities and sets
direction and positioning for market inertia to capitalize on trends and survive disruptions. In
addressing demand trends for innovation, pressures grow in this market for vendors to enhance
traditional practices, as well as introduce new models and practices. Emphasis on the usability of
tools is intensifying as part of enterprises' propensity for vendor selection in favor of ease of use
and flexibility to adapt to changes that enable both business and IT resources to work readily
with the tools.
A growing focus among vendors on aligning their strategy with what they understand to be the
direction of the market, on product strategy and on gaining the adaptability needed to capitalize
on new demand have led to some vendors improving their vision. The vision of some vendors,
however, has reduced in relative terms. While overall strengthening of vendors' offerings
continues, buyers are becoming more ambitious about realigning and revisiting their data
integration focus, in addition to obtaining core functions, as requirements for better alignment
and interoperability between capabilities grow.
Overall customer service and support and pricing approaches, as well as the perception of the
customer base regarding value relative to cost models, caused some vendors to show an
increased Ability to Execute, while others experienced a reduced ability in relative terms.
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